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Contributions from
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InWEnt News
Democracy and human rights: a case for statistics – or not?
Social services – a political challenge for development cooperation
Crisis prevention in Africa: “We need to be more patient”
More money is needed for global tasks
12/2003 |
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[ InWEnt Policy Workshop on Global Public Goods ]
More money is needed for global tasks
“Global public goods” is an abstract and unwieldy expression. According to Mexico's ex-president Ernesto Zedillo, however, the debate revolving around it is essentially about something which is “easily comprehensible”, namely “international cooperation”. Zedillo wants to sharpen the economists' technical term and turn it into an effective tool for multilateral policy. This task has been assigned to the international Task Force on Global Public Goods, which is headed by Zedillo and which started work at the end of September.
The GPG task force has a star-studded line-up. Its members include Inter-American Development Bank president Enrique Iglesias, former Turkish economy minister Kemal Dervis and UNDP Office of Development Studies director Inge Kaul. At the group's first meeting, it defined five thematic areas as priorities: security and peace, trade agreements, international financial architecture, contagious diseases and global environmental problems. These issues have in common is that they cannot be adequately addressed by national policies alone – because they require powers that reach beyond the geographical boundaries of national governments' authority. What is more, the financial commitment that is needed would break the back of any national budget. On the other hand, political failure in these areas is expensive: the costs of insufficient cooperation weigh heavily on the international community.
“The United States is going to spend incredible amounts of money on the invasion, occupation and reconstruction of Iraq”, Zedillo said, explaining his position during a presentation of the task force's work in early November at an InWEnt policy workshop staged in Berlin in conjunction with the German Foreign Office, BMZ and Federal Ministry for the Environment. Multilateral policy, Zedillo asserted, would have been “cheaper and more effective”. But he was also sharply critical of the EU, describing its agricultural protectionism as a massive obstacle to development and a contradiction of European rhetoric of commitment to multilateral responsibility. On the global governance front, the Mexican statesman said, the community of nations is in a crisis of unexpected magnitude. The term “global public goods” could help emphasize the clearly perceived interests shared by all those involved in international cooperation.
As the debates at the Berlin workshop showed, however, more work needs to be done on defining terms. The basic concept is clear enough but operationalising it immediately throws up questions concerning, for instance, money. Who will pay for a policy promoting global interests? How should the costs be distributed? Developing country representatives joined in the debate with a sense of mistrust. After all, their governments are also expected to shoulder part of the global political burden. Fears were expressed, for example, that the rich countries would redirect money from their development budgets into programmes for global public goods. To allay those fears, German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul stressed that funding for global public goods needs to be provided in addition to, but not “at the expense of” official development assistance (ODA).
Hans Dembowski
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